Relations
by MirrorFade
Summary: Six of one, half a dozen of the rest. They’re shinobi. They don’t need a greater reason. The Demon Brothers share a quiet moment before setting off to fight again.


The Demon Brothers don't get enough love. This is my interpretation of them, taking place several days before they meet Team Kakashi.

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**Relations**

_Six of one, half a dozen of the other. _

The words are meaningless, a stupid idiom that was interesting until it was explained. He wouldn't know what they meant either, if Meizu hadn't insisted on asking. The little idiot _always _has to ask, has to analyze every single detail of the world and make sense of it, even if it is a twisted sort of sense. Of course, they were born in the Hidden Mist—born, raised, trained, and avoided dying in by no little amount of luck—so most everything about their story is twisted or fucked up, which amounts to the same thing in the end.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Different words for the same thing. That's what it means. Meizu asked and Haku told him. Why the shinobi who looks more like a woman than most kunoichi knows about idioms, Gouzu doesn't know or care. He doesn't care about much beyond earning his meals and keeping his little brother alive—which should be the easier of the tasks, but it's not.

The eldest sibling is supposed to protect the younger. Higher rank by some cosmic fluke is still higher rank, and they were born into the shinobi life. Military defines them, even if they don't abide by any rules but their own. And so Gouzu yells at his brother when he gets angry enough not to care that the others can hear, yells until Meizu stops glaring and looks almost apologetic. It's not much even on the good days—which aren't actually good days because brothers shouldn't fight nearly as often as they do—but sometimes Gouzu stops long enough to remember how to breathe, and then it's over.

He's done a bang-up job of keeping them alive so far. Everything the world has thrown, they've taken, but rarely perfectly, rarely without losing pieces. Meizu is deaf in his right ear—almost blind on the same side, too—and Gouzu's mouth and throat are so badly scarred that he can't speak right, souvenirs of bad turns that almost ended them, almost killed two brothers who should've known better. They _should_ know better, but they never do. Likely it's their hubris, or something of the ilk. Gouzu isn't one for thinking beyond survival, though—that's Meizu's job, and he's good at it. If "good" makes him so damn absent-minded that he forgets what he's supposed to be doing until someone, usually Gouzu, yells and reminds him.

The base of operations is a little more than a glorified tree house, but it serves their purposes. Genjutsu and wire-traps keep intruders out and his brother with enough potential accidents to give him a new scar every week. If there was another option, then Gouzu would take it, but there isn't. There probably was, once, but they ruined it along with a lot of other things when they agreed to join with Zabuza and his crazy schemes.

It didn't seem like a good idea at the time, either, just one that paid well. Gouzu knows that they won't ever be anything but chuunin, even though Meizu likes to claim otherwise, and there are limitations to the things such soldiers can achieve in the Hidden Mist. Their mother was a kunoichi who died as one when they were ten, gods only know who their father was, and so there was nothing to stop them.

Gouzu tells himself that it was all his idea and Meizu was just his idiot self and went along with it. He's just masochistic enough that it helps when his brother gets into another of his escapades.

Around them, walls made from a jutsu keep the wind out, even if the rain gets in on bad days. It's strong enough to withstand ninjutsu and a good smack from a battering ram—should anyone be driven enough to hit a tree house with a weapon like that—but cold all the time, which is darkly amusing in ways that even Gouzu understands.

"Are you mad?"

Gouzu scowls, something not even the mask can hide, and he's not wearing it now. Usually he doesn't care, but at times it's a bother. Shinobi are supposed to be emotionless, a great theory that was never a practice at any time he's aware of, but gods know, Gouzu never really is. He doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, another of his brother's stupid idioms, but Gouzu gets riled up too easily.

In combat there are two responses to dealing with anger. One is to fight better and win because of it. The other is to fight harder and lose because of the sloppiness it brings along with.

"No," he rasps, hating the sound of his voice, but Meizu doesn't seem to care, and hates being ignored.

"Then say something," Meizu demands, and starts to say something else, but then his eyes widen for a moment, and he's coughing again, hacking sounds that are closer to choking than anything else.

Gouzu waits until his brother remembers how to breathe before responding. He's made peace with the fact that Meizu was an idiot again and got himself poisoned. "I just did."

"You're boring," Meizu declares suddenly, waving a hand in his general direction. If there's a point he's trying to make, Gouzu can't see the connecting logic.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. He shouldn't be surprised.

"How nice."

"Don' you ever do anything interesting?"

"Don't you ever do anything intelligent?" Gouzu shoots back, knowing he shouldn't but doing it anyways. He never wins arguments with his brother. Meizu has some kind of logic alright, but it isn't logic like most shinobi defined the concept, and that includes Gouzu.

There is silence for a minute. A full minute. Gouzu appreciates the fact. He stares out the window, trying to see something beyond the mist that is part genjutsu and part weather and damn cold all the same.

"Am I dead?" Meizu asks, kicking the wall for a reason that apparently makes sense to him.

"No."

"Oh," and he frowns. "I wasn't sure."

Gouzu doesn't see how that works and isn't sure he wants to. "Dead is dead, and you're breathing."

Logic is all it is, because dead men talk in genjutsu and hallucinations, and the current situation is neither, unless something has been fucked up and Gouzu hasn't noticed it yet. Somehow he doubts that's the case, even though he hasn't ever been very good at seeing through illusions, just making them. Seals are easy. Children can make hand-seals, and chuunin can cast complex and layered illusions. Gouzu can do jounin-level techniques, has two A-ranks the boss doesn't know about and won't _need _to know about unless things go to hell more than they already have.

They're good; they're the Demon Brothers and earned that name five years back, after their sensei was killed and they strung her murderers up in a dead tree on the border to nothing but the ocean. Then two years later they walked away from Mist with Zabuza's failed rebellion, nothing but that name and the skills they're learned to keep them alive. They're Mist-nin, former or not it doesn't really matter, and they've survived to see twenty-five and might make it to twenty-six if they're careful, if they don't take too many risks. It's asking a lot, considering their position in the world, the decision they made back when the master swordsman with his pale apprentice asked them a question they answered with an affirmative, but they've lived with it so far.

Logic is required, but Gouzu supposes only one of them need practice it. He's the oldest, after all. Responsibility falls to him first. Most of the time he doesn't mind, and the times he does, well. He gets over them.

Shinobi endure. Gouzu is a good shinobi.

"Yeah," Meizu mutters, rolling over to face the wall and leaving Gouzu to stare at the back of his skull and all his matted hair, so thick and black it might as well be wires. "I'm breathing, alright."

"It's your own fault."

"I know that, too."

Gouzu doesn't say anything for a moment. He watches his brother, noticing the slight hitch in his breathing that says too much about an old injury. It takes something to bring up the job at all, to bring up anything that would make Meizu want to get up—and fighting always does—but Gouzu knows they've got a few things going for them, and honesty is one of them. "We're moving in three days."

Meizu rolls over to look at him, blinking slowly. "Mission?"

"Yeah," and Gouzu's voice breaks suddenly, and he coughs to clear it, rubbing the heavy scars across his throat he doesn't remember receiving, even though Meizu says they're partly from sensei and partly from a Cloud-nin with a poisoned kunai.

His brother doesn't comment, never has and probably never will. Gouzu hasn't asked why. He thinks he understands but doesn't want to ask, doesn't need to know for sure.

Meizu props his chin up on his elbow. "Where?"

"Konoha."

"Oh." Meizu frowns, eyebrows scrunched up in a thick line across his face, mouth almost pouting, but that's how he looks when he's thinking. If it occurred to Gouzu, he might have realized that his brother looked odd without the poison-mask on, that they both look odd to anyone else right then, but he doesn't. "Ninja?" Meizu asks.

"Civilian. He'll get some shinobi if he's smart."

"Is he?"

"Probably. Maybe. I don't know. He pissed off the boss," Gouzu explains, and his brother nods again, recognizing the train of thought for once without the actual wording to make it true. Anyone who angers the boss isn't extremely smart, but it only takes a little intelligence to purchase shinobi guards.

"Why go all the way to Konoha? Closer villages," and Meizu waves in a vaguely north-east direction, to some other minor places without a Kage to their credit.

"Not _that _smart."

"Oh."

"Konoha-nin are better, besides. Well, mostly. Bigger village means cheaper fighters."

Meizu nods because he didn't think of that. "Jounin?" he asks.

Gouzu ponders that for a moment. "No. Man can't afford a jounin."

"We can handle chuunin." It's not a question but sounds like one anyways, a habit sensei couldn't break and Gouzu didn't have any better luck with his brother than the old jounin had.

She'd been good, Naomi-sensei, but not as good as some, and when she died, it had been a shame and nothing more. They had brought her forehead protector to her son, little brat in the Academy and didn't know anything better than fighting with his fists, but they'd handed the piece of metal over anyways, knowing it wasn't going to be respected like it would've been in their hands. Gouzu and Meizu had respected her because she'd been good, because she'd taught them what she knew and that had been a lot. Most jounin were stingy, loath to give away techniques to students that could come to surpass them, but not Naomi-sensei. She'd been one of the old guard, a kunoichi of the generation that slaughtered their teammates after graduating the Academy, and known her students would surpass her.

They hadn't known about her family, hadn't known that the tattoos around her eyes and throat were anything more than black and crimson ink slashing across her body like scars. She never said anything about a Bloodline Limit, nothing about a family curse she'd never activated. It was out of common sense and old pride, for to harbor a Bloodline Limit openly was to risk death in Mist. Her bitter pride had kept her mouth shut more than that, though, for Naomi-sensei had loved strength and hated weakness. She would have hated to admit that she wasn't strong enough to activate the ability, that she didn't even know how to try.

When she was killed they learned. It was called Quicksilver and would have allowed Naomi-sensei to channel lightning through her body, to call it up from nothing and hold it in her hands. She hadn't known that the tattoos kept it sealed it but somebody had and they'd killed her over it, over a fear of something they thought she possessed.

There was irony there, dark and twisted and not at all humorous.

Shinobi were humans and humans killed what they feared. They feared Naomi-sensei a great deal.

The Demon-Brothers are feared more than their dead sensei now. Sometimes they toast her in the dark and filthy places they come to stay at and pretended that she is proud of them.

"Chuunin won't be a problem," Gouzu agrees. He smiles a little and thinks about killing Leaf ninja. They don't have a grudge against anyone in Fire-country, but they don't need one, just a reason and right now that reason is survival and the desire to eat.

"We'll cut them up," Meizu hisses.

His eyes gleam just as much as his little brother's do and Gouzu allows that there's more than just the desire to survive motivating their actions.

Six of one, half a dozen of the rest. They're shinobi. They don't need a greater reason.

--

R&R


End file.
